I'm Mike Pope. I live in the Seattle area. I've been a technical writer and editor
for over 30 years. I'm interested in software, language, music, movies, books, motorcycles,
travel, and ... well, lots of stuff.

Not long ago I posted something about saving your hearing via the diligent use of earplugs if you are around loud things. (In my case, a motorcycle.) I didn't note then that my problem with being able to hear clearly is not new. I've had trouble for a long time hearing conversation in loud restaurants or understanding dialog in movies.

In fact, I had my hearing tested a while ago. Paradoxically, the results said that my hearing is great in some sort of Platonic sense, as in, when tested in ideal conditions in a lab. But Dr. Ears admitted that there was nothing to be done about my filtering problem—being able to pick out from background noise the sounds I actually wanted to hear.

Hearing aids are an option, I suppose. But good hearing aids are shockingly expensive, and often are not covered by insurance. And it's not at all clear to me that they solve this specific problem of attenuating the background noise specifically.

Well, in the creepy way of modern internet advertising, which can apparently read your mind, I recently started seeing ads for something pretty new: "conversation-enhancing headphones." For example, Bose has a product that they call Hearphones. Doppler Labs (which is suing Bose over all this) has a product they call Here Active Listening headphones. (Here, hear, get it?)

If I understand correctly, the devices combine noise cancellation with directional microphones with a kind of equalizer app (on your phone) to do pretty much what I need, namely tune and/or filter noise versus signal. And all at a price that is significantly less than hearing aids (Bose: $600, Doppler: $300). It's true, of course, that you're wearing headphones versus the invisibility of hearing aids. Then again, wearing headphones is pretty normal in a lot of contexts.

I'm pretty excited by all this. In fact, I'd probably go ahead and get a pair of these, but I've been around technology long enough to know that it's not usually a good idea to get version 1 of anything. By the time v3 of these things is available, they should be pretty great, right?

Let me add a linguistic note here as well. The name that Bose has come up with—hearphones—strikes me as so perfect for this device that it feels like it could easily become the genericized term for this class of thing. Any bets?